Salve Internet,

I am Carmine Siena from Corvo Bianco Entertainment. Welcome back to the devlog series regarding the development of Villanus: Imperium Romanum. I am glad to be back and open the third chapter together with you!

The last time, I told you about the society in Villanus and different social classes which can inhabit your city. With this overview, I also gave you the info that the resources you can produce are contingent upon these classes. Climbing up the social ladder will grant you access to new production chains. These production chains will then produce new goods which satisfy the needs of your citizens. Today, we will look more deeply into the goods or resources, however you like to name them.

All the resources are sub-divided into four groups: basic resources, food production resources, materials and luxury goods. Let us have a closer look into these four groups. As you might derive from the name, the basic resources are the very core of every city. These are food (an essential good which your citizens demand in every social class) and the four building resources tools, timber, stone and marble. Whenever you start a new endless game, you will be having at least some food, tools and timber, to start building. To be able to produce stone and marble, you need to have citizens of other social classes first. You will be also able to change the amount of these starting resources when configuring the properties of a new endless game.

The food production resources are just intermediate goods which will be created along the different food production chains. They will not be demanded by citizens, but by the processing buildings. Let me give you a classic strategy game example for this. Suppose you want to have a more efficient food production. You might want to change from fishing or hunting to producing bread. To produce bread, you need three different production buildings: a corn farm with corn fields which produces corn, a flour mill which creates flour from corn and lastly, a baker who produces bread from flour. In Villanus, corn and flour will be these intermediate food production resources. They are only needed to be further processed.

The group of materials is also a rather big one. Materials are all the intermediate goods which will be created along the production chains for either the four building resources or all the luxury goods. Since I want Villanus to have a nice level of complexity, you will be able to build a lot of different production chains, giving you various materials as their output. There will also be production chains where you might need to change the focus of an existing production building. Let me, once more, give you an example. In ancient Rome, a beekeeper was a very important producer. This can also be seen in Villanus: a beekeeper obviously produces honey by harvesting it from beehives which is demanded as a luxury good by your plebs. Later on, your knigths also demand candles as a luxury good. For candles you need beeswax, so you have to change the production of your beekeepers from honey to beeswax while simultaneously making sure that the flow of honey – which is still demanded – does not run dry.

Lastly, the luxury goods are the key resources in Villanus. As I already told you, all of your citizens in all of the different social classes demand luxury goods. The higher the social class, the more complex to produce are these goods. Some production chains are interlinked, using the same materials, but giving different outputs. There will also be some luxury goods which you can only produce by getting raw materials via trading, because your territory cannot produce it. These luxury goods were actually all produced and demanded in the ancient Rome. Whenever possible, I try to comply with historical facts.

Once more, I have to refer to the game being in a state where screenshots or videos do not yet make any sense. Nevertheless, I drafted the icons of the resources some days ago and I would like to show them to you. Our patrons already saw these, since they are always the first to get some “insider knowledge”. Keep in mind that they are the first rough draft and might change during the development.

So, these is all the important information regarding resources or goods in Villanus. What do you think? Are there any adjustments which you would prefer? Make sure to leave a comment in the comment box below! And as always, feel free contact me in case you have any question. Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – both, Villanus: Imperium Romanum and Corvo Bianco Entertainment are on these channels.

If you want to support the development of this amazing project, head over to our Patreon page and become a patron. I am very grateful for each and every one of you aiming to help me realising this game. And don’t worry: you’ll get some pretty cool benefits for pledging!

I am looking forward to hearing from you guys! ‘Til then: happy gaming and “in vino veritas”.
Cheers!